FILM SCORE FRIDAY 6/20/03

Oscar and Emmy nominated composer Herschel Burke Gilbert died on June 8th in Los Angeles, of complications from a stroke he suffered on March 23rd.

He was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on April 20th, 1918, began studying the violin at the age of nine, and by age of 15 had formed his own dance band. In 1939, he was accepted at Julliard where he received a grad school fellowship in conducting and studied composition for four years.

After two years with the Harry James Band as an arranger and viola player, he became an orchestrator on such classic films as It's a Wonderful Life, Duel in the Sun, and The Lady From Shanghai. Turning to film composing, he scored such films as The Moon is Blue, While the City Sleeps, Comanche (released on CD in Japan by MCA) and his most famous score, The Thief. The Thief was a spy thriller starring Ray Milland which featured no audible dialogue whatsoever, thus depending to an unprecedented degree on Gilbert's music.

Gilbert was nominated for the Oscar for Best Score for The Thief in 1952, and was nominated the two following years as well for The Moon is Blue in 1953 (Best Song, for the title tune), and Carmen Jones in 1954 for Scoring of a Musical Picture -- on this film he gave future opera star Marilyn Horne her first professional singing job when he hired her to voice the songs for star Dorothy Dandridge. (His scores for Riot in Cell Block 11 and The Bold and the Brave were also Oscar finalists)

In 1958 he began concentrating on TV scoring, signing on as music director for Dick Powell's Four Star production company, where his output included his classic theme for "Burke's Law" and the theme and music library used in every episode of "The Rifelman." (Earlier Gilbert library cues were used in a variety of 50s TV shows, and at least a half dozen of them are featured on Varese's The Adventures of Superman CD.)

Leaving Four Star, he became the executive music director for CBS in 1964, and, decades ahead of his time, publicly complained about the habit of network promos interrupting the end title themes to his shows, a practice that galls TV music fans to this day.

He retired from TV work in 1966, forming his own label, Laurel Records, which released some jazz but mostly contemporary classical chamber music. Over the years, he was a president of the Screen Composers Association, the American Society of Music Arrangers, and the Society For the Preservation of Film Music (now known as the Film Music Society -- he served on its board of directors until his death), as well as an executive branch committee member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

He is survived by his wife, Trudy; four children, and three grandchildren. In lieu of flowers, donations in Gilbert's memory may be made to the Juilliard School, for the Herschel Burke Gilbert Family Scholarship Fund, in care of the Office of Development and Public Affairs, The Juilliard School, 60 Lincoln Center Plaza, New York, NY 10023.

Jon Burlingame's tribute to the composer can be found on the Film Music Society website.

Beloved actor Gregory Peck died on June 19th of natural causes at his home in Los Angeles, with his wife by his side. Born Eldrid Gregory Peck on April 5th, 1916, his parents divorced when he was six, and after attending San Diego High, he entered U.C. Berkeley planning to study medicine, according to the wishes of his father, a pharmacist. Finding no aptitude for medicine, he joined the drama club, and after college he studied acting at New York's Neighborhood Playhouse. A back injury suffered during a movement class taught by Martha Graham kept him out of the Armed Forces, and thus out of World War II.

After acting on Broadway, he won his first movie role, the lead in Days of Glory, and his second film, The Keys of the Kingdom, won him the first of five Oscar nominations for Best Actor. He was also nominated for The Yearling, Gentleman's Agreement, Twelve O'Clock High and To Kill a Mockingbird.

He won the Oscar for the latter, playing what proved to be his most memorable role, the small town lawyer Atticus Finch. In this film he managed to embody what was arguably the greatest father figure in movie history -- even the film's screenwriter, Horton Foote, told him "I wish you'd been my father," and the character was just named the American Film Institute's leading cinematic hero of the last hundred years. Like Morgan Freeman, he was one of the rare actors one can imagine not only playing the President (which he did several times) but actually voting for in real life.

In the seventies he took fewer acting roles and moved behind the camera, producing the true-life drama The Trial of the Catonsville Nine (scored by Shelly Manne) and the nautical romance The Dove (scored by John Barry). Unlike many of the actors of his generation, he didn't appear in any of the all-star disaster films of the decade, and the conviction he brought to every role helped to make The Omen a huge hit. He also took a rare detour into villainy with his role as Dr. Josef Mengele in The Boys From Brazil -- about as far from Atticus Finch as you can imagine -- and though it was not his greatest role (Pauline Kael pettily criticized him for having "one eye squintier than the other," as if beady eyes are inherently symmetrical), it was a brave and tremendously enjoyable performance, proving a worthy opponent to Laurence Olivier as a Nazi-hunter based on Simon Wiesenthal.

His last great role was as Ambrose Bierce in Old Gringo, and after that he acted only sporadically, supplying the voice of Flo Ziegfeld for the Broadway musical The Will Rogers Follies. Over the course of his life he served on the board of the Screen Actors Guild, was the first chairman of A.F.I.'s board of trustees, was the president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences from 1967 to 1970, was awarded the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award and the Kennedy Center honors, and in 1966 was the national chairman of the American Cancer Society. He is survived by his wife, four children (including actors Cecilia and Anthony Peck), and six grandchildren.

Perhaps because he was never as specific a movie icon as Humphrey Bogart or Errol Flynn, no one has ever released a "Classic Film Scores of Gregory Peck" compilation. But if someone ever did, here are some of the worthy scores they could choose from:

DAYS OF GLORY - Daniele Amfitheatrof
THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM - Alfred Newman
THE VALLEY OF DECISION - Herbert Stothart
SPELLBOUND - Miklos Rozsa
THE YEARLING - Herbert Stothart
DUEL IN THE SUN - Dimitri Tiomkin
THE MACOMBER AFFAIR - Miklos Rozsa
GENTLEMAN'S AGREEMENT - Alfred Newman
THE PARADINE CASE - Franz Waxman
YELLOW SKY - Alfred Newman
THE GREAT SINNER - Bronislau Kaper
TWELVE O'CLOCK HIGH - Alfred Newman
THE GUNFIGHTER - Alfred Newman
ONLY THE VALIANT - Franz Waxman
DAVID AND BATHSHEBA - Alfred Newman
CAPTAIN HORATIO HORNBLOWER - Robert Farnon
THE SNOWS OF KILIMANJARO - Bernard Herrmann
THE WORLD IN HIS ARMS - Frank Skinner
ROMAN HOLIDAY - Georges Auric
MAN WITH A MILLION - William Alwyn
NIGHT PEOPLE - Cyril J. Mockridge
THE MAN IN THE GRAY FLANNEL SUIT - Bernard Herrmann
MOBY DICK - Philip Sainton
DESIGNING WOMAN - Andre Previn
THE BRAVADOS - Hugo Friedhofer, Alfred Newman
THE BIG COUNTRY - Jerome Moross
PORK CHOP HILL - Leonard Rosenman
BELOVED INFIDEL - Franz Waxman
ON THE BEACH - Ernest Gold
THE GUNS OF NAVARONE - Dimitri Tiomkin
CAPE FEAR - Bernard Herrmann
HOW THE WEST WAS WON - Alfred Newman
TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD - Elmer Bernstein
CAPTAIN NEWMAN, M.D. - Frank Skinner
BEHOLD A PALE HORSE - Maurice Jarre
MIRAGE - Quincy Jones
ARABESQUE - Henry Mancini
THE STALKING MOON - Fred Karlin
THE CHAIRMAN - Jerry Goldsmith
SHOOTOUT - Dave Grusin
BILLY TWO HATS - John Scott
THE OMEN - Jerry Goldsmith
MACARTHUR - Jerry Goldsmith
THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL - Jerry Goldsmith
THE SEA WOLVES - Roy Budd
THE BLUE AND THE GRAY (TV) - Bruce Broughton
THE SCARLET AND THE BLACK (TV) - Ennio Morricone
AMAZING GRACE AND CHUCK - Elmer Bernstein
OLD GRINGO - Lee Holdridge
OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY - David Newman
CAPE FEAR (1991) - Bernard Herrmann, Elmer Bernstein
THE POTRAIT (TV) - Cynthia Millar
MOBY DICK (TV) - Christopher Gordon

Church of the Lighted Window - In Praise of Music Series
CLW CHAMBER ORCHESTRA
JOEL LISH conductor, with soloists KAYE ROYER clarinet, BRIAN LEONARD violin, and RENEE VANASSE  piano

Sunday, June 22, 2003 - 4:00PM
Church of the Lighted Window
1200 Foothill Blvd.
La Canada Flintridge CA
(at Verdugo Blvd., near the intersection of the 2 and 210 freeways)

Program:

Bruce Broughton: Four Kinds of Walking
Ronald Royer: Nocturne for clarinet and strings
Mauro Bruno: Waltz to a Rose
(Performed by violinist BRIAN LEONARD as a tribute to film and television composer Mauro Bruno, who died in 2002
J.S. Bach (arr. Joel Lish for strings): Brandenburg Concerto No.2
Adrienne Albert: Interiors (premiere)
Jeannie Pool: The Secret Life of Paper Cranes (premiere) composed in memory of Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu

Suggested donation: $10 / $5 students and seniors. Pre-concert panel discussion with the composers at 3:00PM. For more information, including a season brochure, call (818) 790-1185 or go to: http://www.congchurch.org/concert.htm

Hulk - Danny Elfman - Universal
28 Days Later - John Murphy - Beggars XI
Whale Rider - Lisa Gerrard - 4AD

Alex & Emma - Marc Shaiman
Charlotte Sometimes - Michael Brook
From Justin to Kelly - Michael Wandmacher
The Hard Word - David Thrussell
Hulk - Danny Elfman - Score CD on Universal
The Legend of Suriyothai - Richard Harvey
May - Jaye Barnes-Luckett

June 24
Baby Doll - Kenyon Hopkins - DRG
The Buccaneer - Elmer Bernstein - DRG
Harlow - Neal Hefti - DRG
The Italian Job - John Powell - Varese Sarabande
Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas - Harry Gregson-Williams - Dreamworks
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines - Marco Beltrami - Varese Sarabande
July 15
Johnny English - Edward Shearmur - Universal
July 22
Pirates of the Caribbean - Klaus Badelt
Spy Kids 3D: Game Over - Robert Rodriguez - Milan
Date Unknown
All This and Heaven Too/A Stolen Life - Max Steiner - Marco Polo
Amerika - Basil Poledouris - Prometheus
Battle Cry - Max Steiner - Screen Archives/BYU
Brubaker - Lalo Schifrin - Intrada Special Collection
The Dreamer of Oz - Lee Holdridge - Percepto
The Hellstrom Chronicle - Lalo Schifrin - Aleph
Invasion of the Body Snatchers - Denny Zeitlin - Perseverance
Mighty Joe Young, etc. - Roy Webb, et al - Monstrous Movie Music
Red River - Dimitri Tiomkin - Marco Polo
Seabiscuit - Randy Newman - Decca/UMG
A Summer Place - Max Steiner - Screen Archives/BYU
This Island Earth, etc. - Herman Stein, et al - Monstrous Movie Music

June 21 - Lalo Schifrin born (1932)
June 21 - Philippe Sarde born (1945)
June 21 - Elmer Bernstein begins recording score to 7 Women (1965)
June 25 - Carly Simon born (1945)
June 26 - Dave Grusin born (1934)

THE HEART OF ME - Nicholas Hooper

"If the elegant home furnishings, smart literary references, soft-focus cinematography and plodding semiclassical score (by Nicholas Hooper) evoke Merchant-Ivory, the end product suggests tepid, bottom-drawer Merchant-Ivory in which the emotions rarely catch fire."

Stephen Holden, New York Times

HOLLWOOD HOMICIDE - Alex Wurman

"But anytime the automatic weapons come out and the hip-hop soundtrack kicks in, it feels like Hollywood action business as usual."

David Edelstein, Slate.com

"The movie is chock-full of hip-hop luminaries. So that's not the problem. And, no doubt, the murders of Biggie Smalls and Tupac Shakur, as well as the incarceration of Death Row's Marion 'Suge' Knight went a long way to fueling the murderous rap line. But the movie's ripped-from-headlines pretensions never take. Since it could have been any sort of mayhem, hip-hop's version of it feels like a marketing ploy. Nowhere is this more glaring than in a scene in which a hick perp grabs a cop's gun and starts blasting. They should have been playing 'Cotton Eye Joe' to this bit of shtick. Instead they cue up the funky beats."

Lisa Kennedy, Denver Post

RUGRATS GO WILD - Mark Mothersbaugh

"And in a movie filled with mediocre music from the former Devo brainiac Mark Mothersbaugh, any parent paying attention will get diaper rash at the gratuitous use of a real Clash song during an action sequence."

Michael Booth, Denver Post

"Mark Mothersbaugh's music helps make scenes like one in which a bratty 3-year-old and a bratty teen bond over The Clash's 'Should I Stay Or Should I Go' slightly more palatable, but nothing could compensate for Willis' kid-friendly butchering of Iggy Pop's 'Lust For Life.'"

Nathan Rabin, The Onion

FROM: "Lester Sullivan"

SUBJECT: NYP premiere of Rozsa's Violin Concerto

Here's another one for the just-can't-get-no-respect department: Last night, June 12, the New York Philharmonic gave their first performance of Miklos Rozsa's Violin Concerto -- a mere half-century after it was composed. Conductor Lorin Maazel, violinist and veteran NYP concertmaster Glenn Dicterow, and the orchestra did a great job. As the playbill well remarked, the soloist's long association with Rozsa's music dates from Dicterow's childhood, when his violinist father, then second principal second violinist of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, played as a freelancer on many Rozsa scores. "One of the most difficult pieces I've ever had to learn," Dicterow fils was quoted as saying. Attendance was good, about eighty percent capacity on a work-week night, but there were grey heads everywhere, mine included, with about ninety percent of the audience none too far from entering the rest home, boding none too well for the future of classical music concertgoing in the nation's greatest metropolis. First on the bill was Rachmaninoff's Third Symphony, which the audience largely coughed its way through. During intermission, the very well-heeled gent to my right turned to his wife and remarked that the next piece was by "Rozsa, whoever that is!" (Of course, the guy probably has heard the composer's music many times at the movies.) Once the concerto started, he promptly fell to sleep and slept through the entire thing. His wife managed to keep awake, but only listlessly, and both refused to applaud even once for ANYTHING played that night. For the Rozsa, most of the rest of the Big Apple sophisticates fell silent from their coughing and seemed much more attentive to it than they had been to the Rach. Indeed, the Rozsa is a better piece. At the end, a lone voice spontaneously shouted out "Bravo," which gave a frisson of delight until I had to acknowledge that that sole voice was merely my own. With few exceptions, the great movie composers ever remain, even in the capital of the chattering classes, the Rodney Dangerfields of music.

FROM: "Reza Aminy"

SUBJECT: Temp Score Extravaganza Part 2/4
 
Attack of the Clones' 'villain theme' (first appears on Main Title and Ambush on Corruscant at 3:00) is quite similar to Danny Elfman's Darkman theme.

SUBJECT: Bad Horner, No Oscar
 
In response to the "temp-track" shenanigans that were involved when Horner scored "Honey, I Shrunk The Kids" in the style of Danny Elfman's "Pee-Wee's Big Adventure." Let's not forget that Elfman's music pays serious homage to Nino Rota's music for Fellini's films. James Horner obviously picked up on this fact as he decided to incorporate, note for note, a theme from "Amarcord" (1974). Elfman, at least, used that score as an inspirational springboard for "Pee-Wee" while Horner basically plagiarized it (the Amarcord theme) for "Honey" even down to the occasional use of saxophone.

FROM: "Sean Nethery"

SUBJECT: A Little Listening is a Dangerous Thing
 
Except for a couple of off-hand mentions, Luke Goljan's column lacks any sense of the larger musical context in which movie and tv soundtracks belong. By focusing exclusively on other soundtracks, he misses the larger point that the vast majority of film music borrows heavily -- not simply from other soundtracks, but mainly from other kinds of music.

A couple of examples:

Demolition Man prominently features the Dies Irae (from the medieval Requiem), used countless times over the past couple of hundred years, not just by film composers, but by classical composers as diverse as Berlioz and Rachmaninoff. And Goldenthal in general often sounds too much like his mentor John Corigliano, with minimalists Glass and Adam thrown in.

Half of Xena's main theme is ripped off from the State Radio & Television Female Vocal Choir as heard on the collections Mystere des Voix Bulgares, a world-music hit in the late '80s. This is most apparent in the second track of Xena's volume one, which simply steals and speeds up the lead track of Le Mystere Voix Bulgares, Vol. 2(search for this on Amazon and you can hear it for yourself). BTW, the other half of the main theme is an almost direct steal from Conan the Barbarian, which itself has influences too numerous to mention (meaning I'm too lazy to get into it).

Danny Elfman is practically the bastard child of Bernard Herrmann and Nino Rota, though apparently Ennio Morricone had a hand in there somewhere. But that's ok, because Bernard Herrmann is a simplified synthesis of Wagner, Debussy and Stravinsky, and Nino Rota is Respighi all over again.

The lack of larger context in the column is most apparent when Goljan says that "the only person I've ever heard John Williams really rip off is himself." Since Williams has consciously imitated composers of every stripe from Bach and Handel to Richard Strauss and Steve Reich, it's simply absurd to exempt him from the larger point.

Just because film-score fans listen obsessively to their soundtracks doesn't mean that's where all this music comes from. Soundtracks are almost always retreads of other kinds of music -- and that, fellow soundtrack lovers, is the primary reason why the art form is held in such low esteem in the larger musical culture.

MailBag@filmscoremonthly.com